>VERBOSE

Just a random thought about the way I use sarcasm and its double-edged application --

One might think at my response to this something like "Hey, she was just trying to be encouraging; couldn't you have said something nice?"

Then it occurred to me that for me, that was saying something nice. It was affectionate, even; a kind of inside-out, smirky, eyebrow-raised way of saying that I was genuinely amused by the image she conjured as well as its metaphorical meaning. The sarcastic remark unpadded by any "j/k"s or other such things was, effectively, a play-bite.

I do it in all kinds of (non-"weapon") situations, too, from reassuring myself of the camaraderie of an established friendship to approaching someone of new sexual interest. This latter may seem especially odd -- snarking at someone you may want to fool around with? -- but I think it's something of a peacock display (a drab and prickly one, I grant) coupled with testing for the presence of my own peculiar ideas of what is desirable in a mate of any stripe. If they, too, are capable of communicating like this then 1) I'm probably not going to put them off by doing it and 2) I'm more likely to like talking to them as well as just staring at their sweet flesh from across the room.

(Telling this apart from usage actually meant to sting, especially online, may be something else again -- a subtle science and an exact art, to coin a phrase...)

I have been reading an RP in-character journal for some game's Severus, and some posts were the various characters in the game doing memes like these ones in-character at each other. I'm not in it, but if I were, I guess this is what I would have left for him: ( Read more... )

This is sort of a show of support for lilyevans_snape. I try to say to myself: no excuses, no explanations, no apologies. "Bravery" is linked to "bravado" and comes ultimately from "barbarous". Small wonder the word "hollow" was used. "Courage", though, comes from "cor": from the heart.

I'm getting a little burnt out on hd_worldcup. It's not just that many of the fics are long, because there have been a good number of more manageable ones (<10k), too. I think it's just that I don't care enough. I developed a little taste for Harry/Draco a couple of months ago, but I think the "problem" is that it's just that: a little taste, something I can't really feed on a steady diet of. I'm not yet having the same problem with snarry_games, even though Severus/Harry isn't really one of my top pairings and I am not as filled with squee as some other people are.

Blah. And here I thought I was joking when I said "my little neurons don't want none unless it's got Snape, hon".

schemingreader said in response to my comment on one of her fics:

I love how he shows his feelings when he doesn't mean to, anyway, and that happens a lot when he's high.

Put that way, it rather explains a lot about why many of my favourite Severi are what they are:

• so consumed by desire that he just doesn't care what he sounds like anymore (and the completely-shagged-out!Severus that tends to follow)
• drunk/high/otherwise under the influence of something disinhibiting (whether substance or spell)
• in a fury of epic proportions
• recovering from amnesia/torture/illness/something that saps him of the energy for his usual facade
• desperate enough about something going to be taken away from him that he cracks
• so wrong-footed by an unusual situation that most of his brain power goes to just keeping it together (I like well-done bodyswaps, gender-messing, and time travel, for instance, even though the devices are kind of cliché)

That's not all of them (I have quite a menagerie up here *taps head*), but it was an interesting way of pointing out a common thread I hadn't heretofore noticed.

I don't like Freewill Astrology. Something about the tone annoys me; I think Rob Brezsny often sounds like he is trying too hard. (Hello, kettle? This is pot.) A number of my friends (on starlightforest) enjoy it, however, so I simply skim past any posts of it I see.

Today, as I was doing just that to aureantes's post of his horoscope, I felt a twinge that I should go look up my own, which I ignored. After all, I thought, I don't care for Freewill Astrology, and I have a neverending stream of other things to read.

When I reached the bottom of the post, I saw the phrase "fumbling towards ecstasy" in among some reflections on what Brezsny wrote, and there was that twinge again. Deciding to yield to something that had gone to the bother of poking me twice within as many minutes, I looked up the Virgo horoscope for the week:

In 1954, the writer Albert Camus said, "A person's life purpose is nothing more than to rediscover, through the detours of art or love or passionate work, those one or two images in the presence of which his heart first opened." In the first month of 2008, a humble astrology columnist, yours truly, used Camus' words to direct Virgos towards one of their primary tasks in the year ahead.

(Emphasis mine.)

I already know what one is, at least. I have known for certain since early 1999, consciously suspected it for about a year before that, and can trace its threads back to about 1992 now that I know where to look. It has dark hair and dark eyes and a certain shape and sound and looks at me a certain way, and the character of Severus Snape is only one of a number of instances in my life of this particular template woven so firmly into my psyche that I cannot fail to respond to it.

It was in the presence of another such instance that I first thought that I could be loved and that there was vast beauty in the universe, that I felt a passion and life bubble up inside me and come out as shining strings of words. I know the truth of it in my marrow.

But wait; there's more.

I got turned on to the presence of fandomsecrets sometime during the winter break. I made a couple of my own "secrets" earlier this month and have had them sitting around in my "junk drawer", waiting for either the courage to post them, or a firm decision not to. Every now and again I look at them, idly tweaking the text or its arrangement, pondering whether I really think it likely I would unearth any kindred feeling, or whether it is more likely I would just get mockery. (Like PostSecret, it's anonymous, but it would still hurt, and paranoia says that someone would be able to guess it was me from style or wording.)

Last night I hit on what I thought was a perfect addition to one of them, which tied the whole thing together in terms of both content and design, and summed up the core of the secret. Those magic words, that I thought were so pithy, are the ones at the very bottom right. ( When I read about him... )

I hope the moral of the story is that I was wrong to frame this as a secret because it is not shameful.

( la, a spoiler, still, the same one in fact. bah! )

I really can't. I'm pretty sure it was also a male character but I honestly really can't remember. I don't think it was anyone from HHG or Red Dwarf. It was something else. Maybe even a single movie. Possibly a single book but I'm pretty sure there was a visual image attached to it. But aside from those vague details, it utterly escapes me.

It really is, though, you know. Denial, anger, bargaining, the whole bit. I had twinges of this realization when I found myself starting to see the point of those in the "hey, death in war is teh suxxorz, this kind of shit happens" camp.